The Eye of Heaven

26

Sam and Remi spent a long day at the Institute scrutinizing the relic collection for anything that might be a clue as to which pyramids showed the greatest promise. Dusk was approaching when they were surprised by Maribela’s arrival. Remi was by Sam’s computer, pointing at a photograph of a temple, and realized too late that the manuscript was still up on her screen on the opposite side of the lab table. Before she could switch the image to something more innocuous, Maribela was staring at the scan with bewildered shock.

“You got it! You’re amazing. I thought we’d never see it again,” she exclaimed as Remi hurried back to her station. Remi threw Sam a resigned look and then turned to Maribela.

“Yes. Sometimes we get lucky. The Cubans have been most forthcoming. Perhaps it’s all in the approach …”

“I recognized the document immediately. But it’s still gibberish. That could take years to decode.”

“Actually, we’ve already decrypted it,” Remi said, her tone only slightly arch.

“Really! That’s … unbelievable. You really are miracle workers. What does it say? Anything interesting?”

“We were just discussing it. Basically, it’s an account by a Spanish priest or educated nobleman that tells the story of Quetzalcoatl’s hidden tomb and of the treasure associated with it.”

Maribela seemed taken aback. “I’ve seen the other mentions of the legend, but this was written specifically to relay information about it?”

“In a manner of speaking. The problem is that it’s typical of the era and very vague. If there is a tomb, it’s buried beneath a holy pyramid. That’s the best we’ve been able to figure out.”

Sam moved from his position over to where the two women stood. “We were going to ask you and Antonio to look over the text and help us narrow it down. That is, if it won’t interfere with your current project …”

“But of course! I can speak for my brother. We’d be honored to look at it and offer our thoughts. He’s up in his office. I’ll go get him.”

Maribela hurried from the room and Remi sat down in her chair and glared at the monitor. “That was sloppy of me.”

“We weren’t getting anywhere. Maybe this isn’t the worst thing that could happen.”

“Then why does it feel so wrong?”

“We’re territorial animals. And fiercely competitive. It’s natural to resist sharing ‘our’ discovery.”

“It’s not a discovery yet. It’s only a manuscript. Which may or may not amount to anything.”

“Which is why there’s probably no harm. Besides, Maribela and Antonio would likely be working the dig, anyway, assuming there’s anything to it.” Sam shrugged. “Frankly, if there is a tomb and it’s buried beneath a pyramid, we’d need to get the government’s permission to excavate in a historic site. It’s not like we can just take a backhoe to their national treasures.”

Maribela returned with Antonio and they huddled around Remi’s monitor. Sam couldn’t help but notice that even after a day in the field, Maribela looked like she’d just stepped off the runway in Milan. Remi glanced at him as though able to read his thoughts as she brought up the decoded text on the screen.

They spent the next two hours going over it with the siblings.

“It’s been a long day,” Sam announced as he stood and stretched, glancing at his watch. “Shall we resume this tomorrow?”

“Absolutely. Would you have any problem if we took a copy of both the manuscript file and the decryption so we can study it at home?” Antonio asked, holding up a flash drive on his key ring.

Remi nodded. “Sure. Just treat it as confidential, please. This could be an extremely important find, if we can figure out which pyramid it is.”

“Of course. We’ll limit it to just me and my sister. And Carlos. As the director, his approval is needed to invest man-hours in researching it.”

“That’s fine. Is he still here?” Sam asked.

“No, but I’ll be in early and will tell him all about it.” Antonio glanced at his Panerai. “When would you like to meet tomorrow? Nine?”

“That would be perfect,” Remi said with a smile directed at Antonio.

Sam extended his hand to Antonio for the flash drive. “I’ll go make a copy.”

Their taxi arrived fifteen minutes later. On the way back to the hotel, Sam turned to Remi with a smile.

“Do you want to eat at the hotel or seek out some local fare? I don’t care as long as it’s soon. I could eat a horse.”

“Which you might be doing if we don’t dine at the hotel. Breakfast didn’t sit well with me.”

“It was probably the pig snout.”

“Right. Maybe it wasn’t fresh.”

“That’s the worst. Snout past its prime,” Sam agreed, and they both laughed. “Still having regrets about letting them in on it?”

“No, I’m over that. As much as I hate to admit it, you were right. I was being a big baby.”

“Not really. Like I said, I could see myself doing the same thing.”

“But I expect you to behave like a toddler.”

“It’s part of my naïve charm.”

“You bet it is.”

Dinner was quiet, with Remi agreeing that one margarita never hurt anyone. After enjoying their huge entrées, they returned to their room, both wondering silently whether they’d really done the right thing by handing over the result of so much hard work and if, in the end, any of it would even matter.

The next morning they awoke to their windows rattling from sheets of wind-driven rain lashing the hotel.

“I thought Mexico was all about warm weather and blue skies,” Sam said.

“Well, it’s been warmer than back home.”

“And rained enough to give Seattle a run for its money.”

“Probably the time of year. Hey, do we have time to grab coffee and a roll?”

Sam looked at his watch as he edged by her into the bathroom. “If I don’t shave my legs.”

“I’m willing to overlook it this once.”

The drive to the Institute was slow and miserable, the streets awash with floating trash and overflowing manholes. By the time they made it to the office, it was half past nine. Maribela was waiting for them with an excited expression. It was all she could do to restrain herself when they walked through the door.

“Good morning, Maribela,” Sam said, running his fingers through his wet hair, the result of the run from the cab to the front entrance.

“Good morning.”

“How did your night go?” Remi asked.

“I didn’t get much sleep. Neither did Antonio. But I have good news. Antonio thinks he knows which pyramid it is,” Maribela blurted.

“Really?” Sam said. “That’s great! How did he figure it out?”

“He discarded the Mayan ruins that didn’t fit the criteria or if their story came from an Aztec religious figure. The Aztecs had limited interactions with the Mayans, so it’s unlikely that a secret this important would have been imparted to an Aztec priest. Also, back then, travel would have been difficult into the Yucatán from here, and there’s little chance that any pilgrimage made would have stayed secret for long. And last, unless the body was somehow preserved, it would have been buried around the time of Quetzalcoatl’s death — the ruler, obviously, not the deity. Which narrows the field considerably.”

“Makes sense so far,” Remi agreed.

“That leaves us with pyramids that were in existence at the time of his death — which is uncertain but which we can estimate to be between A.D. 980 and 1100. Either way, while that’s a decent number, it’s not huge. And it rules out all the Aztec sites.”

“But what if the tomb had been constructed later and the body moved?” Sam asked.

“Possible, but that’s not the way the text reads if you adjust it for the nuances of the Nahuatl language. The person who wrote the manuscript was recording what he thought the Aztec was saying, but that’s probably not what he actually said. It’s a record of how a Spaniard would interpret what he said. Make sense?”

Remi nodded slowly. “But because that’s your area of specialty …”

“Exactly. Our interpretation can adjust for what might have been lost in translation. If that’s the case, and there’s no guarantee, then the site is one of the ruins north or east of Mexico City.”

“Which are Teotihuacan, Cholula, and Tula, right?”

“No, Cholula was south, near where Puebla now is.”

“And you’ve definitely ruled out the Mayan cities?”

“As much as anything can be excluded. It would have been impossible to keep something like the construction of a secret tomb beneath a sacred pyramid secret. No, we’re looking at either Teotihuacan, which was uninhabited by the time Quetzalcoatl died, or Tula, where he ruled but from where he was exiled late in his rule. The likelihood is that it’s Teotihuacan because it would have been empty, so anyone working in secret could have performed the excavation and built the chamber without being discovered.”

“Sounds like a lot of manpower,” Sam said.

“Yes, but the manuscript mentions a secret order that worshipped the ruler Quetzalcoatl as a living god and later dedicated itself to the protection of the sacred tomb. If the followers were suitably zealous, it’s entirely possible that they could have done the construction and then taken up residence in the area, keeping their secret through the generations.”

“Then it’s the Temple of the Feathered Serpent in Teotihuacan?” Remi asked. “We’ve been looking at that as one of the candidates, but it seems like it’s too obvious.”

“Sometimes the most obvious place is the best place to hide something of immeasurable value. We have a dig going on there right now. A tunnel system has been discovered beneath the temple, but it was filled in around A.D. 250 and it’s taking forever to excavate it.”

“Then you would have discovered the secret chamber, too, if it was there,” Remi said.

Antonio entered and approached them.

“Maribela was just telling us about your theory about where the temple might be located,” Sam said.

“Ah, yes. Well, it’s all speculative, but, for my money, it would be somewhere beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent,” Antonio said.

“But there’s been sonar done after the tunnel discovery,” Remi said, “and it didn’t reveal anything more. Maybe the tunnel connects to it?”

“Doubtful. One of our colleagues heads up that dig and nothing’s been discovered or hinted at or we would have heard about it. No, if it’s there, it’s somewhere other than the obvious. And the sonar scan that was performed concentrated on that one quadrant after this latest tunnel was found. If it’s in one of the other quadrants, or if it’s deeper than the tunnels, it could be a decade before anything’s found.”

“Then how do we locate it?” Sam asked.

“Based on our interpretation of the manuscript, it seems to point to some fairly specific areas once you narrow it down to that pyramid. Of course, that would have been all but impossible for a sixteenth-century exploration, which may well be why the search was eventually abandoned.”

“How do we get permission to excavate?”

“Well, you’d need a permit from the Ministry. Which I just got finished discussing with Carlos. He’s going to put in a request and see if he can fast-track it.”

“How long will that take?” Remi asked.

“If no resistance is encountered, maybe a week,” Maribela said.

“And there’s the question of funding the undertaking,” Antonio added. “We’re always low on money, and the new find has taken a hundred ten percent of our discretionary fund.”

Sam and Remi smiled at the same time.

“We could make a donation, if that would smooth the way,” Sam said. “Just tell us what you think it would take and we can put the wheels in motion. We’ve funded other digs, so why not this one? Making the discovery is worth more than the cost of a small excavation team …”

Antonio nodded. “That’s very generous of you. Perhaps you could relay that to Carlos? He handles the finances for the Institute.”

Sam and Remi went upstairs to Carlos’s office and knocked. He came to the door and beamed at them before welcoming them into his suite. They first discussed the likelihood of a tomb beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent and he seemed genuinely excited about the possibility. When talk turned to logistics and their participation, he was reticent to commit to a time line but then noticeably relaxed when Sam floated the idea of a donation to cover the excavation expense.

“That’s extremely generous of you. And I’d imagine it will make it much easier to approve if we have funding in place,” he said.

“That’s what we were thinking,” Sam said. “We don’t want to delay exploration. Say the word and we’ll arrange for a wire transfer to the Institute’s account. It can be there by tomorrow.”

“I don’t think it would be overly expensive if you have a specific location in mind. Really, we’re talking about a few workers, a supervisor, possibly some excavation equipment …”

“And a scanner, if you think it would help,” Remi added.

“Probably not, but it doesn’t hurt to budget for it. Figure, mmm … fifty thousand American dollars would more than cover it, including the permit. The scanner must be flown in from the United States and operated by a trained technician from there.”

“Consider it done.”

When they returned to their temporary office, Antonio was scrutinizing satellite photography of the location and Maribela was pointing to an area near one of the corners at the pyramid base. “This is the likely spot,” she said, tapping the monitor. “All of the elements in the Aztec’s account are there …”

“This may seem like a silly question, but is the actual pyramid, this Temple of the Feathered Serpent, solid or hollow?” asked Remi, the thought just occurring to her.

Maribela sat back. “It appears that it’s hollow, but far deeper than could have been reached with any ease from the exterior. What happened is that successive pyramids were built over the prior temples, incorporating them inside. Archaeologists tunneled into it and discovered over two hundred skeletons, as well as human remains at each of the four corners. And they’ve been over it with sonar. There’s no chamber inside.”

“Yes, but sonar has its limitations. I’m all too aware of them,” Sam said.

Remi nodded. “And what about the Adosada platform in front of the pyramid? Have we excluded that as a possibility?”

Antonio shook his head. “That was built at a later date than the pyramid. The Adosada was probably constructed to supplant the pyramid as the place of worship. The manuscript doesn’t discuss it, but, you’re right, it could also be a location. Maybe a sort of sleight of hand of the tomb builders — a misdirection. Or we may be interpreting it incorrectly and it’s none of these.”

“So you think the Temple of the Feathered Serpent pyramid in Teotihuacan is the best candidate?” Sam summarized.

“That’s our belief,” Antonio agreed.

Sam rubbed his face. “Maybe we should go out to the site while we’re waiting for the permit.”

Remi looked out the window. “Once it stops raining. It’s not that far, is it?”

“It’s about forty kilometers away.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Remi said. “Unless anyone’s got any better ideas?”

Sam shook his head. “Sounds like a plan. Here’s hoping for clear skies sooner than later.”